We Are Moving To Austin Texas!

I have big news to share today, we are moving to Austin Texas!

Hey friends!  Did you think I left you hanging forever?!  It feels like forever since I have had time to sit down and write a blog post, and today I have big news to share with you guys!  Hopefully, this post will explain my absence lately on the blog.  We are moving to Austin Texas!!!

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you probably heard the news already.  That is one of the things I love about social media.  It makes it easy to share things instantaneously, so if you want to keep up with everything that is happening with our upcoming move halfway across the country.  I have been sharing in my stories about the sale of our current house, the purchase of our new house, and my hunt for a job.  So please give me a follow to keep up with our journey!

I am going to tell you the whole story now though!  And just know that I have so many awesome things I am storing up in my mind to share with you over the next months and years, because we bought a new house and we are already scheming and dreaming about the updates we will be making!

Yesterday was mine and my husband’s 13th anniversary, and ever since we got married, we have been talking about a possible move to Austin, Texas.  His sister and her family live there, and his brother and his family live in Dallas.  His parents spend their winters in Austin, so we had a very rough plan that once our two oldest children were grown, we would like to relocate there.  My husband and I both love the thought of being closer to his siblings and nieces and nephews.  Well, this upcoming school year, our 11 year old will be entering middle school, so we thought this would be a great time to transition and possibly relocate to Austin like we had discussed so many times over the years.

We really started trying to make more concrete plans when we realized that right before middle school would be a perfect time to make a change, so my husband began the job search.  We felt since he is the breadwinner, it was more important for him to have a secure income before we even thought about moving.  He searched for a couple of months, with not much luck or interest in opportunities that arose.  And then one evening, it occurred to me that he should check within his own company he works for to see if they had any possible opportunities to transfer to either Austin or Dallas.

We were stunned to find out that there was a job posted within his company, for the same exact job he currently has, right in Austin!  So he decided to apply, and within about a week and a half, he had been offered the job!  After that moment that he accepted the job in Austin, everything kind of seems like one big blur.  Because they wanted him to start the job on June 24, and this was early May.  We spent the weekend  discussing how we would be able to make this huge move in such a short time period, and we knew we needed to get our house on the market ASAP.

So, on May 15 we placed our house on the market.  We weren’t fully prepared and hadn’t planned to be listing our house for sale, so we did the best we could in about 48 hours we did as much we could to get it ready.  Which basically consisted of cleaning and decluttering.  Our house was shown 10 times on that first day it went for sale, and by the next morning we had two really good offers.  We accepted an offer on our home that following day.  Everything was happening so fast, and when we got our house under contract so quickly, we felt that it was a sign that this was definitely the direction we should be moving in.

Once our house was under contract, we booked a four day trip to Austin to shop for a new home.  When choosing  which part of Austin to search in, we mostly took into consideration my husbands new job and the locations of the places he will be traveling to as a drug rep.  We settled on a few different areas just about 15 miles north of Austin to focus our house search.  Thanks to an Instagram follower, we were put in contact with a realtor in that area.  The areas were looking at house were Round Rock, Pflugerville, and Cedar Park, TX.  We felt good about all three of those areas and did a lot of of google searching to find out what was to offer in all three, including school systems of course!  So at that point, it was a matter of what house we would choose.

We spent a solid two days house hunting, and walked through so many houses that they all starting running together in my mind.  I did take photos and videos of my favorites, so that in the evenings we could sit and look at those and discuss our options.  In the end, we chose the second house we walked through as our favorite, and it was located in Round Rock, TX.  We actually ended up going back to it again at the end of the first day and bringing my sister and brother in laws to see it too.  There was someone else who was also bidding on the house at the same time we were, but we ended up winning out and getting the contract on the house!  We did write a letter to the homeowner introducing ourselves and telling a little about our family, why we were relocating, and why we loved the house and wanted to make it ours.

When we began our house search, I had a few things in mind that I wanted to find in a home.  I wanted either a covered front or back porch, I wanted a large kitchen island, I wanted a bathtub in the master bathroom, and I wanted it to be just a tad of a fixer upper so that we could add our own flavor to the home. I need to something to blog about, after all!

We settled on a house in Round Rock that was built in 2004.  I felt like this house checked off all of those boxes, plus, it had a small sunroom, and I have always loved a sunroom, and never had one.  It had the best yard of any house we viewed, and it has a quaint little park with trees and a picnic table right next door, so I liked the idea that no one would ever build a home on one side of the house.  I am already scheming and dreaming about what I will do in this new house!  One thing I can tell you for sure is that the kitchen will be getting a remodel shortly after we move in.  Like, as soon as we can possibly get someone hired and ready to start.  We won’t be trying to take on the entire remodel ourselves.  It will be mostly hired out, and I will probably do a few small projects myself.

Since we have not closed on the house we are selling or the house we are buying yet, we decided not to share photos or videos of the house just yet.  We are a little superstitious that we might jinx ourselves before everything is signed on all of the dotted lines.  But I promise, I will be sharing our new home as soon as I can!  Please remember, you will get lots of sneak peeks and information about our journey by following me on Facebook or Instagram.  Here is one little sneak peek that I shared on Instagram.  I am so excited to have a sunroom, and I have big plans for this space!

In other news, I got a job!  And before I get into the details about it, let me just say that searching for a job is serious business!  I spent hours, well days really, searching for a job.  I haven’t interviewed for jobs in 10 years or so, so I needed to update my resume, get references together, and start the process of getting my Texas school counseling certificate.  The entire process took quite a bit of time on my part, but I ended up applying for 18 school counselor jobs.  I interviewed for two jobs, and I was hired as a middle school counselor at a school about 15 minutes away from the house we bought.

Words cannot express how thankful I am to have been offered a job before I have even left to move there.  I prayed and prayed about finding a job, and I know that God had the perfect job just waiting for me!  As a matter of fact, I know God had a hand in this entire process from the beginning with my husband receiving a job transfer.  All along the way the stars have been lining up, and I am praising God for the opportunities that have been placed in our paths.

We will begin making our journey to Texas on July 12, and it will take us 2-3 days to drive there.  Luckily we only have one car that we have to drive.  So it will be the three of us and our dog making the journey.

Let me talk briefly about the moving process and how we worked it all out.  When we first began getting estimates from moving companies, we were astounded at the cost.  Our very first estimate was for $15,000 to have people pack and move for us.  That estimate was from a standard moving company.  We knew we couldn’t afford to pay that, so we began the search for alternatives.

We ended up hiring a local company who will be packing and loading the truck for us.  And then we went with a service called U-Pack.  They will be bringing a 27 foot trailer and dropping it off at our house on July 8th.  We have three days to get it loaded and ready to go, and then they will return on the 11th to take the trailer to Texas, where it will be delivered to our new home on July 19th.  Doing it this way got the cost down to about $6,000, which is much better than $15,000!

We decided to sell quite a bit of our furniture for two reasons.  One, it was going to be too much of a hassle to get it all to Texas.  Two, I want to have a fresh start for our new house and to be able to choose furniture specific to our layout and floor plan.  And obviously, I don’t want to decorate in exactly the same way in the new house as the house we live in right now.  What fun would that be?  Plus, there is a plethora of thrift stores, flea markets, and things of that sort, and I am already excited about all of the new alternatives I am going to have to furnish our new home.

So, that about wraps things up with our big news!  I am so sorry for my radio silence on the blog lately, but now you know why!!!  I hope you will hang in there with me while we make this transition, because once we get settled I will be back to blogging on a regular basis, and I will have all fresh new content to share, and I am very excited about it all!  I can’t wait to share our new city and our new home with all of you!  And I hope you will enjoy following along!

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